There has been a great deal of discussion about whether Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment precludes Trump from being re-elected president. Issues swirl, from whether the president is an officer to why it was specifically omitted. Is he precluded from running or just serving? Must he be convicted or is it left up to the states to decide? There are “expert” opinions all over the place, meaning that the Supreme Court’s decision can legitimately go either way.
But what if the Court rules that a state can decide to reject Trump as a candidate and not put his name on the ballot?
The court will hear arguments this week that Trump is prohibited from running for office because he violated the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and supported an insurrection on Jan. 6. The conventional wisdom is that the court won’t disqualify Trump — that even if that’s what the law requires, it would be too explosive a move to oust the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination. In other words, if ever there were a case in which the Supreme Court might put a finger on the scales in favor of keeping the peace over following the law, this one might be it.
But what if the court shocks the country, and rules Trump is no longer eligible? What would it mean for the 2024 presidential race, for the Supreme Court, and for a society where political tensions are spiking? Is some kind of violence sure to follow, or could the decision nip it in the bud?
Whether people are ready to take arms in the event that Trump loses is a serious question. After all, it’s not as if some of his supporters are disinclined to engage in violence. Maybe the number of people ready to take to the mattresses is insignificant, given that Trump’s calls for protest at his arraignment in New York fizzled pathetically. But then, leaving their fearless leader off the ballot is a bit bigger a deal than a court case and, at least in the minds of those who believe he won and the election was stolen, a basic affront to his right to run and their right to vote for the candidate of their choice.
Is this the death of democracy, preventing citizens from electing Trump? Is this attack on democracy worth going to war over?
And if the threat of violence is real, and a ruling upholding a state’s right to exclude Trump from the ballot under Section 3, should that affect the Supreme Court’s decision? After all, the Court doesn’t exist in a vacuum, even if it is not supposed to consider the political ramifications of its rulings when deciding what the Constitution requires.
Much as a ruling against Trump would enhance the Court’s appearance of legitimacy with those who believe that it’s become Trump’s captive court filled by his partisan hacks to do his bidding, would it risk throwing the nation into a civil war by ruling against Trump? Should it?
Even though the Court could well rule in Trump’s favor this time, would it be the kiss of death to the Court’s legitimacy for those who believe that Trump has well earned being excluded under Section 3 for calling his supplicants to Washington on January 6th to prevent the election of Joe Biden?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply, within reason.
H/T Hal for sending this over.
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Unbridled joy and wild celebration is my guess.
Con su permiso;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV16Ysr03Vw
More thoughtful response may come later.
Using the courts to ban disfavored candidates is something I expect in Russia and Venezuela, not America. Trump should be tried by the electorate, in an open election. And the idea that a ruling unpopular to the left would somehow “…be the kiss of death to the Court’s legitimacy for those who believe that Trump has well earned being excluded under Section 3…” is funny to those who disagreed with Roe and other decisions and were even told it was our turn to sit in the back of the bus for a while.
The idea that pro or anti Trump factions would be willing to go to war over this is frightening. Were that to happen, it’d make the breakup of Yugoslavia look like a church picnic and it too terrible to take seriously.
But I have a hard time accepting that Trump and Biden really represent the “best and brightest” America has to offer. I hope this election forces some hard reflection on all of us.
Pushing the boundaries, I know, but this seems so apt;
Then we only have to find a way to dump the other one.
IANAL, IMHO, the only reason not exclude Trump from the ballot in Colorado is a determination that Jan 6 did not rise to the level of an insurrection, or perhaps that Trump was not sufficiently connected to it. All the other arguments are just word play. And, as I understand it, that determination is not for SCOTUS to make; it was Colorado’s.
Trump probably wouldn’t carry Colorado anyway.
Since there is no official finding I know of that Jan 6th constituted an insurrection, I don’t see how they could rule any other way. No court has ever convicted anyone of insurrection that I know of
A Colorado judge found that former President Donald Trump engaged in insurrection during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol but rejected an effort to keep him off the state’s primary ballot because it’s unclear whether a Civil War-era Constitutional amendment barring insurrectionists from public office applies to the presidency.
The fundamental danger is that this entire exercise will create a new normal where people are denied the opportunity to determine who governs them through the ballot box because activists of one stripe or another seek to use lawfare to remove choices from the ballot. Even if Trump presumably wouldn’t win Colorado or Maine, the voters are being denied their right to express their electoral support for him, something which could just as easily be done to remove a Democratic candidate from a red state ballot. The authority to remove a candidate from the ballot should be a truly extraordinary measure used only in the absolute clearest of cases, which means it should ideally never be used. We are currently seeing the impeachment process devolve from something extremely grave to remove a duly-elected President into a mere political cudgel; disqualification should not be allowed to go down the same path.
Not a threat but a piece of advice.
If the SC rules against Trump, the justices better start wearing level III plates in their body protection.
“It’s not as if some Trump supporters are disinclined towards violence”?
I submitthe vast majority of supporters on both sides of the partisan spectrum are disinclined toward violence. Moreover, the frequency and destructiveness of political violence of the last century has overwhelmingly come from the left.
One side effect of tossing Trump (this could be off-topic since it’s not about political violence, but maybe more leeway for TT) is that this would kill any momentum towards the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and likely take it backwards: if even a couple bluer states are tossing the favored Republican candidate from the ballot, and (likely, because of tit-for-tat game theory reasons) a few redder states respond by tossing the favored Democratic candidate, what utility as a signal would the popular vote have? California is heavily Democratic, but they still put in millions of votes for the Republican candidate every cycle; if removing Trump, or a successor, from the ballot cuts off 2 million votes for the R candidate, or vice versa in Florida there’s 1.5 million less votes for the D candidate who was removed, then the popular vote becomes even more meaningless than it already is.
Also this would distort the incentives in state Secretary of State or elections board races: you’d see candidates running saying “I pledge to remove those insurrectionary [Republicans/Democrats] from the ballot so that they won’t commit another [Jan. 6/CHAZ/2020 BLM] insurrection” in heavily red or blue states, and the parties’ bases will likely vote for them on that basis. One response to these hypotheticals might be “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, this is about Trump”, but crossing this bridge is tantamount to burning it.
Republicans appearing to win the electoral college but Trump not becoming president is, IMO, the only likely scenario for a breakup of the United States.
Assume Trump wins the Republican nomination but some states remove him from the ballot and he is replaced by his VP in these states. If he and his VP combine to win the electoral college, but congress elects Biden, things will get bad. Faithless electors could cause the same nightmare scenario.
What will the leaders of Texas, Florida, etc do when there is actually good argument for Trump winning? What will Republican in congress do? Will some red state military base commanders obey Trump when he declares martial law?
The members of the military move around the country (and world) so often that I don’t think you can ascribe to the military base commanders anything having to do with the state they happen to be in.
“Will some red state military base commanders obey Trump when he declares martial law?”
The last time a President declared martial law was during the Civil War. I personally think the active military would sit out any attempt to use it on the civil population, and would encourage the organized reserves and National Guard to do the same. Somebody has to be let to put the pieces back together again.
This years election is not a two way race and it is not a foregone conclusion that, absent Trump, Colorado and Maine will continue to be easy pickups for Biden. Absent Trump, the Trump voters will remain in Colorado and Maine, and they will still be voting. I can see Trump supporters voting for Kennedy, if only to thumb their nose at the powers that be. Kennedy will also peel quite a few voters off of Biden. West, et al, will peel some more off of Biden. Kennedy wins Colorado and Maine. Nice job… nice job, Democrats.
The idea that it is undemocratic to keep the orange con man off the ballot is a load of cr@p.
There are rules for things. Lots of them for all aspects of life. There are rules for running for president. This con man broke the rules. He gets left off the ballot wherever they so choose.
Democracy: The God That Failed
(with apologizes to Richard Crossman)